Painting or drawing, what's the difference?

Painting and drawing - what they have in common

• Whether you are painting or drawing, the result is in both cases a two-dimensional image on a painting or drawing. Drawing ground, mostly paper or canvas, but also wood, Stone, leather, etc. come into question.
• For both activities you need tools (brushes, pens) and / or other materials (charcoal, paints). Of course, you can also use your fingers as a tool.
• You have to observe the laws of perspective and take proportions into account. There are artists who deliberately disregard or distort these laws. That then belongs to her very own, personal style.
• You should also prepare yourself when painting as well as drawing. Before you start, think about the choice of motif, the division of the pages and the mood you want to capture.

This is how you paint

• When you paint, you need colors; most of the time you use a brush. Watercolor, acrylic or oil paints are most commonly used. You also need water or, in the case of oil paints, turpentine oil as a thinning agent. The paints are applied more or less wet (thinned) to the painting surface.
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How to paint - Tips to get you started

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• You can also apply the colors in paste form. This technique is widely used in acrylic or oil painting. This gives you 3-D-like structures. You can use painting knives or spatulas to work on these structures.
• Watercolor paints are easily soluble in water. With them you can very well apply glazes, transparent layers of paint. If you put glazes of different colors on top of each other, you get new colors and shades. You don't mix the paint on the palette, but on the paper. You can do this with acrylic paints, but you won't get as good results.
• When painting, areas of color are often in the foreground. You hardly find any linear structures.

The specifics of drawing

• When drawing, (almost) everything revolves around the line or the stroke. You don't need thinners like you do with painting. When drawing, you work dry. Drawing ink is an exception. It is mixed with water and put on paper with a pen.
• The most famous and easiest drawing tool is the pencil. It is available in different degrees of hardness.
• One of the oldest drawing materials is charcoal. It can be easily blurred. This technique is called shading. This enables you to achieve particularly smooth transitions and edges.
• You can also draw with pastel pencils. Likewise with sepia or red chalk pencils. Sepia and red chalk are natural colors. They are particularly suitable for portrait drawings.
• The most important technique in drawing is hatching. This enables you to create shades or color gradations. You simply put a lot of lines next to each other in parallel or cross-hatching on top of each other. The tighter you set the lines, the darker your area will be. You will get the same effect if you put many points next to each other. Try to draw a whole picture with only dots.

Regardless of whether you prefer to be with Colours paint or draw with pens, the important thing is that you enjoy it. Just try a different technique or tool every now and then.